The maintained attention assessment in patients affected by Myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome: A reliable biomarker?, by Inigo Murga, Larraitz Aranburu, Pascual A Gargiulo, Juan-Carlos Gomez-Esteban, Jose-Vicente Lafuente in Journal of Translational Medicine Vol 19, #1, p 494, December 4, 2021
Research abstract
The maintained attention is the cause of great functional limitations in CFS/ME, a disease that mainly affects women in the central period of life. Cognitive function is explored using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the maintained attention using the Toulouse-Pieron test with which the Global Index of Attention and Perception (GIAP) is obtained, the fatigue using the visual analog scale and the perception of effort using the modified Borg scale.
The final sample were 84 patients (66 women/18 men) who met diagnostic criteria (Fukuda-1994, Carruthers-2011) and 22 healthy controls (14 women/8 men). Most of patients maintain normal cognitive function, showing low or very low attention score in the 70% of patients with a marked cognitive fatigue compared to the control group (p<0.05).
There were no significant differences between genders in GIAP or fatigue for CFS/ME; however, sick women perceive cognitive effort higher than men. Deficits in sustained attention and the perception of fatigue, so effort after performing the proposed test are a sensitive and reliable indicator that allows us to substantiate a clinical suspicion and refer patients for further studies in order to confirm or rule out CFS/ME.
Conclusion
General cognition remains preserved in most patients, only a small group of them shows a significant mild cognitive impairment. Maintained attention is clearly deficient, showing a marked fatigability after the Toulouse-Piéron test. The effort was perceived as very hard by both gender, but higher by women.
This study proposes a simple clinical way to assess maintained attention. Present results support the reliability of maintained attention as biomarker of CFS/ME. Attention deficit is a significant disability in patients affected of central fatigue.
